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1st Anniversary of the NCSC's new home

One year ago, Her Majesty the Queen officially opened Nova South, GCHQ's new National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) building.

News article - 14 Feb 2018

It has been one year since HM The Queen and HRH The Duke of Edinburgh officially opened the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), a part of GCHQ.

Cyber Security has long been an important and integral part of GCHQ's mission. In October 2016 the NCSC was set up as part of GCHQ to provide a 'one stop shop' for cyber security, uniting separate parts of Government. This was done in support of a national ambition, outlined in the National Cyber Security Strategy, to make the UK the safest place to live and do business online.

On February 14 2017, the NCSC's new operational nerve centre in central London was officially opened.

The NCSC's incident management service facilitates victim support work from Nova South and responded to 603 significant cyber attacks in 2017, ranging from attacks on key national institutions like the NHS and UK Parliament, through to attacks on large and small businesses. A crucial part of the NCSC's role is to help everyone to operate more securely online, and its information-sharing platform with industry grew by 43% over the year.

But the organisation also creates dynamic solutions to prevent as many attacks as possible getting through in the first place. Since launching the pioneering Active Cyber Defence programme, the UK's share of visible global phishing attacks dropped from 5.3% (June 2016) to 3.1% (Nov 2017), 121,479 phishing sites hosted in the UK have been removed (and an additional 18,067 worldwide spoofing UK government) and takedown availability times for sites spoofing government brands is down from 42 hours to 10 hours.

The NCSC has also helped to nurture the next generation of cyber security experts through its CyberFirst courses and has enjoyed great success inspiring young women with the CyberFirst Girls competition.